Ben Lesser was born in Kraków, Poland in 1928. After the German army invaded Poland in 1939, Ben and his family were subject to countless acts of violence by Nazi soldiers and forced to live in the Bochnia Ghetto.
Ben's journey over the next years would be filled with unimaginable pain and suffering. He would survive a seven-week death march and four different concentration camps - Auschwitz-Birkenau, Durnhau, Buchenwald and Dachau.
He would also survive two separate death trains. On the train from Buchenwald to Dachau, Lesser said he spent three weeks in a cattle car with no water, surviving on only crumbs of a bread roll he had smuggled on. Of the 5,000 prisoners on this train, Lesser was one of only 18 who survived and is the last one alive today.
Lesser and one of his older sisters would be the only two of their seven-person family to see liberation.
Interview recorded on November 5, 2022
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Video Credits:
Interviewer - Bob Patrick
Director of Photography - Umit Gulsen
Editor - Daniel Taksas